Discussions on punk and race instantly brings to mind not only the Clash song “White Riot,” but also the Minor Threat song “Guilty of Being White.” The song was written by Ian MacKaye, who was frustrated by being mistreated, because of the color of his skin, by black youths in the community he grew up in. Highly contentious, debate and different interpretations continue to surround the song. As the book White Riot and the reactions to it show, this contention extends to the issue of race and punk as a whole.

The thing about punk is, as D. Boon said: “punk is whatever we made it to be.” From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, punk was a melange of not only different races, but also voices, messages, outlooks and ideas. Music scenes sprung up across the United States (and parts of Canada), forming an underground network where people could raise voices differing to the status quo of the mainstream.

In the following, I try to touch on the diversity that existed in the underground punk network in the United States. It is by no means comprehensive, but should provide a taste of what was happening, and how the varying elements of that diversity mixed together.

Well, except for Diversity being an old wooden ship from the Civil War era

Yes indeed, science has its formulas. Albert Einstein came up with that one about “mass–energy equivalence” and now everybody knows that E = mc2 (well, supposedly anyways).

Then there’s Sir Issac Newton and his trifector of motion. He wrote it in Latin so I can’t understand it, but people say it’s important and I believe them ever since the time I got lost in an apple orchard.

Pattie Boyd

But it’s not very fair for science to hog all the important formulas. Music should have some too. And thanks to a gal named Pattie Boyd, it does.